Teachers as Learners: Decolonising the Bolivian (Pluri)nation through Play and Legitimate Peripheral Participation

AN399 Special Essay Word Count: 8,244 Candidate Number: 64053

Teachers as Learners: Decolonising the Bolivian (Pluri)nation through Play and Legitimate Peripheral Participation

“One way to think of learning is as the historical production, transformation and change of person” Jean Lave & Etienne Wegner (1991:51)

“Bureaucracies create games - they’re just games that are in no sense fun” David Graeber (2015:190)

Introduction

The current Bolivian constitution, which came into effect in 2009 under

Bolivia’s first ever president of indigenous origins, Evo Morales, establishes the State’s legal

obligation to foster a society ‘built on decolonization’. The discourse of ‘decolonisation’

implies not simply the emancipation of and rights for historically marginalised indigenous

communities, but a revival of ‘the best of’ the ancestral knowledge and practices - that is,

vivir bien (living well), living in equilibrium with other people and nature, in communality,

solidarity, reciprocity and complementarity(Ministry of Foreign Relations, 2010).

As affirmed by Paolo Freire (1985) education cannot be separated from politics. The

institution of the school and the new educational law ‘Avelino-Siñani-ElizardoPerez’ are

considered primary means through which the process of ‘decolonising’ knowledge is to take

place. It declares school education as communitarian, productive and participative to reflect

and retrieve the community focused life, characteristic of the Andean indigenous people

(Aymara & Quechua), and teachers are portrayed as the “soldiers of the liberation and

decolonisation of Bolivia”(Lopes Cadena, 2010:2). Nevertheless, political and educational

changes do not happen spontaneously, but are gradual and involve complex processes of

learning that operate a set of practices and create subjectivities.

Candidate Number: 64053

The majority of ethnographic work on schooling has been centred either on the

“interpellation” (Althusser, 1971) of students into a system that reproduces inequalities in

economic and social capital or on the students’ resistance to this “interpellation” (e.g Willis

1981; Foley 1991). Looking at the actual processes of knowledge acquisition - can reveal the

formation and multiplicity of participation in the schooling environment, which is usually

framed in the language of relative group homogeneity - e.g ‘the lads’(Willis, 1981) or

‘earlobes’ or ‘troublemakers’(Ferguson, 2000). Anthropologists are practiced in representing

cultural ideas and practices: most, however, do not adequately account for the means of their

acquisition and internalisation. This deficiency is intimately linked to a broader reluctance to

engage with psychological theory, which they perceive as too individualist and reductionist to

be of any substantial use to anthropology (see e.g Strauss & Quinn, 2006). I have chosen to

give special attention to teachers for despite their role as pivotal agents in reproductive and

productive schooling processes they have received little attention in anthropological literature

and almost none has been given to their training and formation.

This paper will look at the disjunction between various cognitive schemas held by

teachers in training (teachers to be) at a Bolivian teacher’s college (escuela normal or normal

school), how they are influenced by the broader societal structure and ethos and how do they

shape the teachers-to-be’s participation in the school community, leading to the reproduction

of certain scripts of participation within the Bolivian education system.

After a brief overview of Bolivia’s history of formal education, I will review schema

theory and Lave and Wegner’s theory of ‘legitimate peripheral participation’. I will then

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clarify my understanding of ‘decolonisation’ and investigate whether it is achievable through

formal education. Finally, I will turn to an analysis of the learning practices at the escuela

normal, as studied by Aurolyn Luykx (1999), and compare them to the community-focused

schooling of Warisata and the Peruvian village of Chillihuani. I suggest that the ‘total

bureaucratisation’ (Graeber, 2015) of Bolivian education, immersed in an ethos of

competition and hierarchy leads to the disjuncture between ‘decolonised’ ideological schemas

and ‘colonised’ scripts of participation. Adhering to rules they never made up (yet

scrupulously follow), we can say that Bolivian teachers are “caught inside some kind of

horrific game” (ibid:190). Play, as the “pure expression of creative energy” (ibid:191) is a

space in which ordinary rules are suspended(Huizinga,1949) and new “identities-in-the-

making”(Argenti, 2001) emerge. Play can be purely improvisional but can also “create

games, it can generate rules” (Graeber, 2015:192). The issue is what kind of game it takes for

reciprocity and cooperation to take hold.

What I do not aim to do is assess the feasibility of Morales’s project to create a truly

plurinational society and an intra-cultural education system, as Andean culture is

representative of only a small part of the geographically and culturally diverse country . Nor 1

will I deal with the issue of the limits and possible formations of vivir bien in the current

global capitalist economy - an important one but nevertheless yet too large to cover here. 2

What I am interested in exploring here is the creation of particular identities and modes of

Critics of the current government accuse it of ‘colonising the country with a new hegemony - that of 1

quechua-aymara Andean culture (see e.g Mealla, 2012).

For structural possibilities and limitations of vivir bien, see collection of essays (eds Farah H & 2

Vasapollo, 2011)

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participation fostering schemas that organise our experiences. Schemas which submerged in a

particular ethos can become indispensable for ‘decolonising’ the (pluri)nation.

EDH-101: A Brief History of Education in Bolivia

Formal education in Bolivia, as seen in relation to the country’s indigenous

population, can be roughly divided into three main periods - that of exclusion, that of

assimilation and that of increasing indigenisation. During the first years following the

country’s independence, schooling, and juridical citizenship as such, was restricted to white,

Spanish-speaking and property owning males. It was not until the 1952 national revolution

and the abolishment of the hacienda system that the indigenous were formally recognised as

equal-in-status citizens and eligible for formal education. The ‘equalisation’ was understood

in terms of assimilation of the indigenous population into the power-yielding cultural capital

through nation-wide castellanization and modernisation of education (the later meaning

science, progress and civilisation aligned with mestizo culture and urban living (see e.g

Canessa 2012)). Spanish was the only official language of instruction and Indian culture

considered ‘backward’; an impediment to the country’s progress that ought to be expunged.

It was only in the late 1980s that indigenous languages and concepts started making

their way into official curricula and came to be the crux of educational policies in the 1990s

under the coalition government of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and the indigenous vice-

president Victor Hugo Cárdenas. The 1994 educational reform mandated bilingual education,

inter-culturality and more parental influence in their children’s education. It was by no means

the case that the exclusion and assimilation periods were free from indigenous resistance to

this cultural discrimination in formal education, however. The most prominent exception to

the general trends in education was the founding of the first indigenous school Warisata in

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1931 by Elizardo Perez and the Aymara educator Avelino Siñani. The school and its nuclei

were short-lived, but decisive in providing inspiration for the current educational reforms.

The 2010 educational law no.070 “Avelino Siñani-Elizardo Perez” is not only named after the

founders of the Warisata but is also based upon its principles, following a “socio-

communitarian productive” model of education (Ministry of Education, 2014a,b). This

turbulent history of formal education has contributed to the formation of ambiguous identities

among Andean teachers as ‘agents of modernisation’ simultaneously superior to and in

solidarity with others of indigenous origin. They acquired particular ways of teaching,

discussed in depth later, which undermine the movement towards vivir bien. These are not,

however, un-amendable scripts, for teachers are always members of a community of practice

in continual change.

Schema Theory and Legitimate Peripheral Participation

For Lave and Wegner, learning does not consist of passive knowledge acquisition but

“takes place in a participation framework” (1991:15). It is a process that is not circumscribed

by the boundaries of the mind, but is ‘situated’ in the broader environment. Lave and Wegner

attempt to theorise the ‘situation’ of learning with a concept they term ‘legitimate peripheral

participation’ . This involves gaining increased access to particular roles within a community 3

of learners by gradually moving from being a newcomer to a full participant or old-timer in

the community’s structure of participation. Lave and Wagner recognise and consider vital the

contradictory characteristics of learning communities as both the means of achieving a

Peripherality does not stand in opposition to centrality but rather suggests the “multiple, varied, 3

more- or less-engaged and -inclusive ways of being located in the fields of participation defined by a community”(1991:36).

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certain continuity of generations and as sites of change as newcomers with different arrays of

other learning memberships and past experiences join the community. In fact, they put an

emphasis “on connecting issues of sociocultural transformation with the changing relations

between newcomers and old-timers”(ibid:49). Participation allows for a “renewed

construction of resolutions to underlying conflicts”(ibid:57) as participants learn from each

other and from technologies of practice. The shifts change the subjectivity of the self, for

“learning and a sense of identity are inseparable (…) aspects of the same phenomenon”(ibid:

115). According to Lave and Wegner standard theories of knowledge internalisation focus too

much on the individual by the very assumption that learning is something that takes place

inside the brain, while it is “neither fully internalised as knowledge structures nor fully

externalised as instrumental artifacts or overarching activity structures” (ibid:51). Their

perspective of learning as taking place beyond the confines of the individual person is very

welcome. Nevertheless, to my mind, Lave and Wegner have eschewed the notion of

‘internalisation’ rather too hastily. Their theory of learning as movement towards full

participation in communities of practice is very promising, but it needs a clearer explanation

of how precisely it is done.

I agree with Dan Sperber (1985) that there is a difference between public and mental

representations. A person receives a public representation as input from the environment and

turns it into a mental representation to be remembered, forgotten or transformed and

potentially converted into behaviour. It is in this sense that the “construction or retrieval of

mental representation may cause individuals to modify their physical environment”(ibid:77),

leading to the construction of new public representations. I argue that the psychological

notion of a cognitive schema is a useful tool with which to conceptualise the inter-subjective

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transfer of representations in communities of practice. In the most general sense, a schema

can be described as the means by which we make sense of our environment. Schemas

organise our experiences, allowing us to perceive different parts as particular wholes guiding

our future expectations of and behaviour during certain situations. Schemas are culturally 4

specific, because even though they are held by individuals, shared experiences lead to similar

schema formations. New information can either be assimilated directly into existing schemas,

modifying them accordingly or lead to a total reconstruction of the schema when

inconsistencies between the old and new information are significant. We hold schemas about

anything from objects and places to abstract concepts and events. According to Anderson &

Pearson (1984), the job of the researcher using schema theory is to specify the form and

substance of schemata and their use in action. I will make use of four types of schemata -

self-schemas, role schemas, concept schemas and scripts (event schemas) to elucidate the 5

context dependence of full participation at the escuela normal and identify which ones can be

considered obstacles to ‘decolonisation’. Firstly however it is necessary to look at the

relationship between schooling and ‘colonisation’ and how to re-appropriate schooling

allowing it to become a tool for ‘decolonising’.

Indigenous Knowledge & Learning as Participation: Is ‘deschooling’ necessary for ‘decolonisation’?

The universalisation of schooling in Latin America served as the main propagator of

Western imported values from coloniser countries and, just like the colonisation project, was

For an overview of schema theory see (Widmayer, 2003 ) 4

Script schemas differ from the other three in that their public and mental representations are more 5

directly accordant.

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upheld on the basis of the need to civilize the backwards indigenous populations (see e.g

Canessa, 2012). Schooling was also part of a wider colonial bureaucratisation mechanism

rendering people visible, impersonal and administrable with documentation . Many 6

anthropologists have documented the interference of schooling with the transmission of local

knowledge . Rival (1996), for example, describes how schooling has led to a de-skilling of 7

the Amazonian Huaorani children in forest knowledge, chanting and craft-making and the

loss of other elements of Huaorani culture.

According to Ivan Illich (1971), schooling pervades the ethos of the whole society.

The institution guides the peoples’ “lives, form[s] their world view, and define[s] for them

what is legitimate and what is not” (ibid:4). In his view, schooling can never be based on

principles of participation, as it utilises “words which are preselected by approved educators,

rather than those which his discussants bring to the class” (ibid:10). However, making use of

such a perspective in the case of Bolivian education would miss the undeniable fact that the

spread of schooling and Spanish literacy did not mean univocal subjugation of the indigenous

population but also new means of expression and the formation of ethnic consciousness (see

e.g Gustafson, 2009). If we are to take seriously that learning in the school environment is

inherently participatory, that the participants’ schemas will influence their learning outcomes

and have an influence upon the structure of the institution and learning of others, then the

paradoxical nature of the school as both oppressive and emancipatory becomes

understandable. As new ideas enter the community of practice, either via new participants or

See e.g. Scott (1998).6

See(ed) Middleton (1970) for cases of early accounts.7

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via policies and projects, they assimilate into the participants’ schemas, leading to changes in

the whole structure of participation.

Lave and Wegner’s theory of learning as “a way of being in the social world not a

way of coming to know about it”(1991:24) echoes the Andean conception of knowledge as

something that is not ‘out there’ to be grasped, but rather is something which is embedded in

the very practice of learning. Scholars of the Andes consistently argue that “Andean Indians 8

don’t have ‘knowledge’ of the world around them,” which is a “Western construct that

implies a one-way, objectifying relationship between the knower and what is

known”(Borque, 2000:195). In the Quechua language, there is no separate wording for

knowledge and learning, as knowledge is “inseparable from the experience of the human life

cycle” and is “acquired because and when it is relevant” (Crickmay,2000:43). ‘Living well’

consists of “harmonic life in permanent construction”(Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2010:191);

without trying to ‘live better’, for one can only do so by means of exploitation at the cost of

another ‘living worse’ (Choquehuanca, 2012).

Legitimate peripheral participation is an analytical viewpoint on learning, not an

educational strategy (Lave & Wegner, 1991:40). I wish to argue, however, that making its

claims explicitly recognised could help decouple the association of learning in a school

environment with passive text-book knowledge acquisition - an association which leads

scholars like Yapu (in Mayorga Lazcano, 2012) to declare that the institution of schooling is

antithetical to indigenous education. Participation is never absent, even from the most

For ethnographic examples of knowledge of weaving, music or agriculture see volume (eds Stobart 8

& Howard, 2002).

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monopolising and oppressive school environment, and has actually been at the heart of

Wariata’s indigenous, institutionalised education. ’Decolonisation’ does not necessarily imply

‘de-schooling’; it implies a dis-association of knowledge with textbook contents and being

‘educated’ through receiving certificates.

Teachers as Learners: Legitimate Peripheral Participation at the Normal School

In her ethnography The Citizen Factory (1999) Aurolyn Luykx links up Marx’s theory

of labour with subjectivity theory to analyse the training of new teachers in a Bolivian rural

teachers’ college. Luykx’s ethnography provides particularly useful insight into the nature of

schooling as her informants are both students and teachers to be. As Farthing & Kohl remind

us, “many teachers are steeped in colonial mentality, which is how they were

trained” (2014:107). This is crucial for it implies that “not only are students interpelled as

particular types of subjects but they also learn to carry out the same process with their future

students”(Luykx,1999:126). As such, they are largely responsible for the creation of new,

‘colonised’ subjectivities. However, Luykx’s description of the ‘factory’ does not portray

production as passive and unquestioned: it is a space in which “various ideologies are lived

out” in an “interlocking system”(ibid:168). She is well aware that socialisation into the

school is “a dialogic process in which hegemonic forms are simultaneously absorbed, resisted

and transformed in unpredictable ways” (ibid: 241). She, as this paper will make clear further

on, brilliantly demonstrates the different ways in which the teachers to be participate at the

school depending on the situation. She does not, however, explain the reasons behind these

profound differences in ethnical consciousness manifestations. There exists a multiplicity of

schemas of participation within the same community of practice activated depending on the

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context and occasion. Hence applying both Lave & Wegner’s theory and schema theory to

Luykx’s ethnography can illuminate their working in practice and better understand the

gradual learning processes that can ultimately lead to ‘decolonising’ the (pluri)nation.

Luykx reminds us that “subjectivities produced by state institutions are not static but

change with the changing needs of the state” (1999:127). The state’s policies and discourses

do not stand in a direct relation to student subjectivity and practice but enter the school

community of practice leading to changes within specific schemas of participation. Full

participation “requires access to (…) information, resources, and opportunities for

participation” (Lave & Wegner, 1991:101) and can face many obstacles. The rural normal

school is “at the crossroads of ideological currents” (Luykx, 1999:128) and thus the ideal

space to analyse “the conflicts and ambivalences contained in institutional messages” (ibid.).

Exploring how the indigenisation around the time of first reforms infiltrated (or not) specific

schemas of participation within the normal school can help predict the ways in which ideas

embedded in the new educational law “Avelino Siñani- Elizardo Perez” will come to manifest

themselves in practice.

- The Classroom

The lessons at the normal school are characterised by “rigid, memoristic models of

the past” (ibid:41). From Luykx’s descriptions of classroom interactions, the script active

during a typical lesson consists of passive listening to the teacher’s lecture (usually textbook

dictation), copying out passages and lists and reciting them with little comprehension of their

content. Thus, the school’s structure of moving towards full participation involves mastering

“the acts of copying, recitation and test-taking (…) in fulfilment of institutional

requirements”(ibid:193) with the ultimate goal of obtaining grades, certificates and

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placements. Luykx goes as far as to describe the teachers’ to be schoolwork as “alienated

labour” without direct use value but exchanged for a title with a guarantee of a job and salary.

Even political content becomes “hollow slogans (…) disengaged ‘school knowledge’ and

simply serves a bureaucratic function as commodified information” (ibid:179, my emphasis).

We could say that such a classroom environment leads to, as Illich claimed, the

“confusion of teaching with learning, grade advancement with education, a diploma with

competence”(1971:3). That would, however, be too superficial of an interpretation. Most of

the teachers and teachers to be at the normal school are aware of the educational

meaninglessness of the exchange and enter into a “mutual agreement to pretend that

“teaching” and “learning” have in fact taken place”(1999:186). The script of classroom

engagement is thus divergent from the ideological schema of what learning should be about.

As one teacher to be, Jose, complained:

“On the exam, one had to answer with one word, two words(…) This isn’t an exam(…) one has to give his point of view, his critique, his opinion, what he thinks, right?…If I were the teacher, I would

give that kind of test. And evaluate, pull out the major points, that way the teacher can learn too” in

(ibid:180).

The teacher’s role in perpetuating this structure cannot be downgraded for, even if

they are not directly prohibiting it they are inhibiting the development of a more student-

inclusive mode of participation by rendering it illegitimate. Lave & Wegner write that

“gaining legitimacy is also a problem when masters prevent learning by acting in effect as

pedagogical authoritarians, viewing apprentices as novices who “should be instructed” rather

than as participants in a community”(1991:76). The professors, already being professionals

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think highly of themselves and possess a status of symbolic and practical authority. The

teachers to be recognise the ingenuity of the teacher’s status as the ‘knowledgeable’;

however, their role schema of ‘a teacher’ certainly holds the person as somebody ‘to be

obeyed’.

When looking at legitimate participation, we must always take into account the

relations of power within the community of practice, for conditions often “place newcomers

in deeply adversarial relations with masters, bosses, or managers (…)which distort, partially

or completely, the prospects of learning in practice”(Lave & Wegner,1991:64). In Lave &

Wegner’s view, this leads to a formation of ‘informal’ communities of practice in resistance

to the ostensibly primary organizational form (ibid.). Luykx does not record any instance of

open defiance, nor any creation of a counter-culture: while the teachers “could openly scold

them (…), students could not break the mask of deference to defend themselves”(1999:220,

my emphasis). While this does not prevent learning as such - which always happens - it leads

to the learning of a schema of participation in which as part of moving towards full

participation you need to ‘give in’ to restrictive rules.

Given that the students are also teachers to be, their participation has tremendous

consequences for the whole community, as by following the script “the students who

faithfully carry out tasks they view as meaningless may become teachers who do the same or

who require students to do so”(ibid:287). Nevertheless, classroom behaviour constitutes

associations and practices that are schemas of participation relevant only to a particular

classroom situation and thus cannot account for subjugation of the teachers to be as a whole.

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In one sense, the content of the teaching was framed as vague or meaningless pieces

of information; on the other hand the curriculum, is directly said to have influence upon the

self-schema formation of the teachers to be. This is so despite Luykx’s assertions that

curriculum and interactional structure “are so closely linked studying either one in isolation

from the other results in partial or distorted interpretation”(ibid:172). Classroom portrayals of

the Bolivian (now-pluri)nation at the normal school were overwhelmingly derogatory:

statements like “we don’t have many scholars, nor do we have great works of art(…) we must

educate ourselves”(ibid:135-136) were common place. Teachers were told they should be

reformers and that the future of the country lies in their hands. Already during Luykx’s

fieldwork in the 1990s, well in anticipation of current ‘decolonising’ reforms, the teachers

were encouraged to work with communities in a “democratic and cooperative manner” (ibid:

141), preparing individuals to participate in social change. They were however, also

presented with bleak prospects of change, with Bolivia’s ‘underdevelopment’ attributed to

“national flaws” or “gargantuan forces of capitalist exploitation”(ibid:136). Aymara culture

was valued only as a past “golden age”, not in its present modern day manifestations (ibid:

147). Thankfully, those were not the only sources from which the teachers to be formed their

schemas of the self and nation. Whereas the typical lesson (under the schema of schoolwork)

did not provide “a fitting space” for debates about ethnic and class identity other scripts of

participation provided ample space for it. I argue that these scripts beyond classroom

interactions were public representations of the teachers-to-be’s ambiguous identity and were

therefore at the crux of historical change and transformation.

-Hora Civica & Theatrical Performances

Ethnic pride and “revolutionary” ideology - now official state discourse - first entered

the school during the weekly civic hours (horas civicas). Those included the performance of

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indigenous songs, poems and dances which mostly addressed the Aymara’s long history of

oppression and included political calls for empowerment and mobilisation. Nevertheless, the

hora civica performances followed a “rigid format” (ibid:286) and more importantly were

“exempt from spontaneous feedback; ideas could be broadcast but not debated”(ibid:134).

We could say that as part of the official curriculum, hora civica expressions of indigenous

culture can be considered “hegemonic incorporations of autochthonous strains”(ibid:273) -

texts about indigenous culture that in opposition to Andean ideology consider knowledge to

be ‘out there’ and not embedded in the learning process. They do, however, provide material

for practices more authentic and relevant to the teachers-to-be’s identity and reality by the

‘recontextualisation’ of folkloric forms “in conjunction with urban cultural forms”(ibid:278).

Such ‘recontextualisations’ and expressions of cultural ambiguity were most visible during

dances and ironic skits staged by the students which, to my mind, are a public representation

of the process of mental schema modifications and reconstructions resulting from schema

contingency clashes.

Luykx asserts that humor is “a central element of teacher’s occupational

culture” (ibid:75). During satirical performances, the teachers to be were able to challenge

authority and express their concerns. These included linguistic hypocrisy, cultural negotiation

and mockery of politicians. The performances expressed the inconsistencies of the teachers-

to-be’s and their professors’ self and role schemas, as in one play in which the teacher tries to

teach his pupils the five Spanish vowels unable to pronounce them correctly himself. The

authoritative status of the teacher is challenged by his incompetence and his professional and

modern self-identification by indigenous origins. In another play, an Aymara family send

their child abroad, present their dark-skinned son’s passport classifying him as ‘white’ and

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struggle to write down their vernacular tongue in a letter to him expressing the negotiation of 9

ethnic and linguistic demarcations. The civic programs, despite their satiation with

indigenista, themes were constituted as ‘readerly texts’ while the plays, by showing rather

than giving a direct meaning, invited the audience to participate in its construction. Another

public representation of cultural ambiguity was apparent during the performance of dances.

In one dance the teachers to be parodied “drone-like bureaucrats whose identical mannerisms

and pompous gestures suggest[ed] upper class products of over-education” (ibid:265)

shattering the superiority of bourgeois norms to which they themselves partially subscribed to

by deciding to become teachers.

In Luykx’s view, dances and satiric performances “do not signify alternatives to those

norms so much as responses” (ibid:263) and are perceived by the students as recreational

rather than political. Rehearsed in free time and not part of the official curriculum, if we

follow Luykx’s observations, these practices can be said to form part of the teachers-to-be’s

schemas of play rather than work. Nevertheless, this does not imply that these associations

were rigid and unquestioned for what constitutes full legitimate participation in a certain

context is open to change. Graeber (2015) rightly points out that the difference between

games and play per se is that the former is bound by rules while the latter allows for free

expression of creative energies. It is freedom for its own sake yet in its proceedings new rules

for a game can emerge. Luykx quotes, yet does not seem to take seriously enough, Baumann

and Brigg’s claim that “play frames not only alter the performative force of utterances but

provide settings in which speech and society can be questioned and transformed”(1990:63).

See Podesta Arzubiaga (1993) for the importance of the oral tradition in Aymara culture and his very 9

relevant to our discussion proposal for a more verbal-grounded liberating education

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Shared experience leads to comparable schema transformations allowing for social change.

Based on his fieldwork in the Cameroonian Grassfields Argenti argues that play provides a

means of action allowing Oku children to re-create their identity by coupling the new

national reality with their local tradition and imagine “a possible future which does not yet

exist”(2001:83). Luykx herself recognises that it is in the most ambiguous spaces, “providing

the greatest space for resistant behaviour and subversive satire,” that the “the feeling of

communitas” (1999:19) was greatest amongst the teachers to be and, I may suggest,

encouraged a joint quest for potential change.

Luykx undertook her research before Morales took power in the Bolivian

government. The idea of indigenous revival achieved full participation in the governmental

community changing the structure of participation to be one of indigenous governance.

Woman in bowler hats and pollera skirts begin to appear in parliament seats and indigenous

attire topped the fashion industry (see e.g Shahriari, 2015), legitimising the affinity of an

urban lifestyle and indigeneity. Argenti argues that, when the Oku child enters the skin of

another, such as the ‘White Man’, in pretense, “the other is transformed by being made to fit

within the local comsmology in the making”(2001:83). The cultural amalgamation, Luykx

claimed the teachers to be relegated to the sphere of play, had come to be a legitimate form of

participation in the formal political scene. When the teachers to be parodied upper-class

bureaucrats, they transformed them and made possible the emergence of an indigenous

bureaucracy. Playful expressions formed reflexive arenas for critical reflection (Bauman &

Briggs, 1990:60) on the context-dependent meaning of intra-cultural identity and are thus

likely to have led to its inclusion in the rules of the political game. They did not, however,

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lead to an adherence to the principles of vivir bien observable in projects of community based

education.

Community-based education: Warisata, Chillihuani & Ley070

- Warisata The philosophy behind the indigenous Warisata ayllu-school active between 1931 10

and 1940 was based on a belief that the education of the rural campesino should be 11

education for life not merely a demonstration of ‘knowledge’; centered on efficacy, not

memorisation (Perez Uberhuaga, 1991). In grand contrast to Luykx’s escuela normal,

Warisata students “did not study to take an exam”, but to live, “and life cannot be measured

in metric unities, evaluated or compared”(Mostajo, 1992:103-104, my translation). The

school also served as the “nucleus for the community” including and welcoming all

community members. It provided shelter and a dignified job to all those without families and

in financial difficulties (ibid). Most importantly, it evolved around notions of co-operative

work, solidarity and mutual respect, in which no particular contribution was significantly

valued over another or limited to a particular position within the school as a professor or

janitor. This is in accordance with Foreign Minister’s Choquehuanca’s (2012) description of

vivir bien and contrasts with the role schemas aspiring professionals at the normal school

hold about their future job:

“I think there are janitors for that, to take care of keeping things clean, those things, right? I believe if a man wants to be a professional, he has to dedicate himself to study. Completely to study, no? And maybe he has to have fun also” - Carlos ( in Luykx:1999:140)

ayllu can be broadly described as a community form based around communal work and ownership, 10

for historical changes ( see e.g Iriarte, 1979)

the dismantling of Warisata is widely attributed to increasing hostility from the ruling criollo class 11

following Warisata´s success and the growing tendency towards assimilation of the indigenous leading towards the 1952 National Revolution (see e.g Mostajo, 1992).

�18


At the normal school manual work came to be associated with lack of education while

at Warisata it was glorified as assuring the well-being of the whole community. At Warisata,

the child was encouraged from kindergarten to develop a sense of work: not just intellectual

work, but also of rearing animals and taking care of the gardens. In a similar vein, the

construction of the school’s facilities all took place by means of ayni and mincka forms of 12

co-operative labour. Similar sense of community is being promoted by the new educational

law, Ley n.070, which seeks to join ‘theory with productivity’ to assure harmonious living

between community members and with Mother Earth. The Ministry of Education’s (MoE)

documents containing curricular proposals and suggested teaching methods for primary

education include concrete guidelines for the implementation of a ‘socioproductive’ project

(2014a,), as well as proposals for games, artistic and corporeal expression beyond regular

textbook teaching. One exercise describes the creation of a “collective story” which would

“articulate the children’s ideas (…) combining different linguistic expressions

(oral,musical,corporeal) or illustrating with graphics the story’s content”(ibid, 2014b:12, my

translation). The creative potential, we have identified as a drive for transformation among

the teachers to be, is obvious here. It is, however, confined to documents, which moreover

delineate how children should progress through stages and how to spot ‘achievements’ and

‘difficulties’ in their practices. For example, in the area of ‘visual arts’, it is considered an

‘achievement’ if the child “asks the teacher how to improve his model” (2014b, my

emphasis) but an “impediment” if he “lacks equipment” due to “economic limitations” or

“needs help with the creative expression of his context”(ibid, my emphasis). The documents

ayni refers to help given to a couple or individual in house construction and mincka to collective 12

works benefiting the whole community ( Mostajo, 1992:28)

�19


thus implicitly signal a hierarchisation of knowledge for other pupils are not mentioned as

advisors to turn to. Moreover, a focus on achievement at the personal rather than the

communal level promotes individualism not co-operation and material necessities to progress

in learning reflect a need to ‘live better’ to ‘know better’ and not to know by ‘living well’. I

suggest that the reasons behind this lie in the fact that the scripts of participation in the

community of practice of the Ministry of Education and the normal schools are governed by a

different ethos than their ideological schemas - a suggestion I will closer explore more

closely in the next sections of this paper.

- Work as Play & The Culture of Respect

Inge Bolin (2006) describes how from a very young age, the Chillihuani Quechua

speaking community in Highland Peru are socialised into what she terms ‘the culture of

respect’. The children are respected and allowed to learn at their own pace and in turn they 13

learn to respect others and to contribute to community life by carrying out tasks and being

hospitable. We can say that the Chillihuani have a particular ‘ethos’ (see Bateson, 1958) of

respect, as individual emotions become standardised to value feelings of cooperation,

appreciation and respect over ones of self-regard and rivalry. Moreover, the Chillihuani do

not distinguish between play and work, with the former directly leading to the latter, as

children understand tasks they will need mastery of in adult life through playing with

pebbles and other natural materials by, for example, constructing miniature homesteads.

Bolin (2006) also notes the creativity fostered by the lack of ‘pre-manufactured’ toys as the

children play with what is at hand. I suggest that such creative skills could also lead to better

critiques of ‘pre-written texts’ and ‘strengthen’ their relationship with the ‘natural’ as part of

Bolin contrasts this with the norms within Western societies where children are expected to have learned a set 13

of skills by a particular age

�20


their modern life. There is no such thing as ‘lack of equipment’, let alone it being a learning

impediment.

The intersection of play and work schemas can also be spotted in Warisata’s

curriculum in which gardening jobs were described as “playing manual games” with the aim

of acquiring the “value of initiative, mutual strength, toughness and solidarity” and

“conceptions of form colour, volume and space”( Mostajo, 1992:109) to prepare children to

later learn “scientific knowledge(…)the metric system, geometry, geography and

history”(ibid:111). Warisata education was and promoted itself as modern in that it did not

eschew scientific advancements and welcomed new guidelines for health and hygiene. Yet its

modernity was one which did not attempt to dominate nature , but instead included it in its 14

webs of mutual care. Warisata also made officially legitimate the culturally ambiguous

participation the normal school’s teachers to be manifested in their performances: “we

participate in the modern as much as in the antique, we have Spanish blood as much as

indigenous”(ibid:131).

In Bolin’s (2006) account, teachers claimed there was too much emphasis on

competition in the town and city schools and, as such, they preferred to teach the Chillihuani,

who showed them more respect. Bolin sees the roots of this ‘competitive’ ethos in the city

school’s dissociation from community life. Even if official state documentation in Bolivia

encourages communitarian socio-productive participation, the institutional reality of the

school is likely to diverge from the textual ideal, especially if the teachers’ army is trained, to

See e.g Scott’s (1998) description of high-modernity 14

�21


quote an MoE official, on “islands[with an] institutional attitude with no links at all to their

environment”( in Lopes Cadozo, 2013:26).

The Utopia of Documentation : Structural & Practical Challenges to Revolutionary Thoughts

“It will take time and serious investments to challenge the ‘‘old habits’’—or barriers to institutional change—and put into practice the ‘‘new political ideals’’ of transformation and

decolonization”

Lopes-Cadozo (2013:32)

Any analysis of legitimate peripheral participation in a community of practice will not do

without an “analysis of the political and social organisation of that form, its historical development

and the effects of both of these on sustained possibilities for learning” (Lave and Wegner, 1991: 64).

We should eschew any claims that indigenous education is incompatible with a modern society. Why

then might there be more problems with the bridging the gap between ideology and practice at a

contemporary Bolivian school than there were among the Chilluani? I propose that the main obstacle

is the dominance of a culture of competition, documentation and the impersonal character of ‘modern’

states legitimised on the basis of ‘rational-legal’ authority ( see Weber 1978 ).

Our description of classroom interactions at the escuela normal seems in accordance with

Graeber’s (2015) description of the age of ‘total bureaucratisation’ in which bureaucratic techniques

“pervade almost every aspect of everyday life”(2015:21). Most class time was devoted to

“bureaucratic and ritual practices of teaching than to the social relationships involved” with “entire

class periods spent on such skills as marking attendance, figuring grades, and record

keeping”(Luykx, 1999:142).

Graeber recognises that there are many reasons for which bureaucracy is appealing. - the

main ones being its seemingly impersonal nature destined to assume value-free, equal treatment for

all. This however is an utopian vision as it proposes “an abstract ideal no real human being could ever

�22


live up to” (2015:26-27). It is not equal for its rules are always at first subjectively created to merit

somebody and can serve to, in Graeber’s words, “wield power(…) by attempting to monopolise

access to certain key types of information”(2015:150) and certain types of documentation.

( n.a, n.d source:http://weknowmemes.com)

In order to achieve anything within a bureaucratic society you must rely on those capable of

providing you with documents of the right kind. This made the teachers to be at the normal school

dependent upon the grace of the professor, owing to his privileged position and institutional

connections. This meant the frequent need to resort to corrupt practices: to better the (often artificially

lowered) grades or simply to access the technologies necessary for legitimate participation as scarcely

available books needed to pass examinations. (Luykx, 1999). The dishonourable and uncritical nature

of the normal school education contrasts sharply with the views the teachers to be held about the

teaching profession as newcomers to the community of practice:

“I’ve been quite disappointed… (…) if they are going to graduate as teachers, they should graduate as good teachers. (…) I had another idea of what the normal school would be like” - Sergio ( ibid:213)

It can be said that newcomers come to the normal school with an idealistic role

schema of the teacher’s profession, but as they become full participants and learn which

schemas of participation the school community of practice considers legitimate, they become

increasingly disillusioned.

�23


Warisata’s practice of documenting education could not stand in greater contrast to

that at Luykx’s normal school: “evaluation was secondary”, for the one converting his

students performance to numbers “cannot judge himself” to be “the mediator of his students’

destiny”(Mostajo, 1992:103). To assure the quality of graduating teachers and fulfill

“bureaucratic formalism”(ibid) for the MoE, Warisata’s teachers college held a ‘qualification’

but it “did not have the character of an exam, (…) [it] was a flexible demonstration of

aptitudes”(ibid). In this way, it managed to bypass the character of Bolivian formal education

in which “the amount of bureaucracy is high and accountability is often low” (Luykx,

1999:251).

Reliance on particular documents to legitimate a learning process is analogous to relying on

uncritical copying of textbooks. Luykx’s point that “the mere fact of having been written seemed to

confer any text with sufficient authority as to make challenge or critique almost

unthinkable”(1999:178) applies to certificates as much as to glossy books. Achievement is not based

on merit but on compliance to play along and pretend it is and, as Graeber reminds us, “insofar as

bureaucratic logic is extended to the society as a whole, all of us start playing along” (2015:26).

Everybody follows the script necessary to obtain legitimate documentation even if their idea of what

schooling should be about is different.

“Unfortunately, the system itself makes it so the teacher simply has to go along depositing [information] in the child’s mind(…) Personally I don’t agree but that is the system. The programs they give us, we simply use them like they tell us to, right?(…) We have to break that tendency, be a bit more flexible” - Professor Torres (in Luykx, 1999:187).

Professor Torres’s words suggest that, even if the previously quoted Jose was the normal

school’s instructor he would probably not, as he claims he would, give a critique stimulating exam. It

is not, however, documentation per se that is inhibiting student participation and encouraging corrupt

�24


practices but its presence along a particular ‘ethos’ promoting feelings of ‘superiority’, ‘inferiority’

and constant ‘competition’ in the normal school and teaching profession. The hierarchal reasoning

among the professors and teachers to be was visible in Jose’s note about the janitor’s role and the

derogatory assertions about urban indios made in classes. It linked the school to a wider ethos of

competition in the profession. The institution needs to graduate a certain amount of students to

maintain its status and the graduates need to resort to corruption in their professional lives to obtain

particular positions. Although the system guarantees (at least in theory) a job position to every

graduate of a teacher’s college certain positions are more highly regarded than others because of their

location. Rural positions were seen as ‘inferior’(the location of the first two years of obligatory

service) and a move to more urban ones came with promotion ( based on an exam or its substitution in

payment) on the still active 5 level seniority scale, the escalafon (see e.g. Lopes Cardoso,2013). This

hierarchical ‘rotation’ of teachers, to my mind, poses a further challenge to the creation of

‘community-based’ and ‘participatory’ schooling.

Raja, n.d

Professor Torres’ words also point to the second reason why bureaucracies, according to

Graeber, are appealing - if we lived in a world of pure critique and transformation co-operation would

be impossible. Language is a good example here for if it had no semantics and syntax of any kind we

would “all just be babbling incoherently”(2015:199) Another excellent point made by Graeber is that

�25


on the other hand people do not write grammars, but first speak them and that this speech is in

constant transformation. Yet when it becomes inscribed into a book it starts to serve not just to

describe how people talk but “prescriptions for how they should talk” (ibid:197,emphasis original).

Such was the case with Aymara taught at the normal school: the professor was “a stickler for speaking

Aymara correctly”(1999:155) i.e., as it was spoken before the Spanish conquest, rejecting forms

spoken by the teachers to be, many of which were extremely common among monolingual users. He

also did not realise that his ‘correct’ use of Aymara is unlikely to equate to the pre-conquest usage. I

am by no means advocating here for an about-turn from using textbooks. One professor teaching

about the difference between evolutionist and creationist theories and lacking texts encouraged more

than usual class participation. Yet when students have objected making conclusions on the basis of

lack of information, they were “brushed off”(ibid:183) and encouraged to take a stand as to which

theory is right and treat the right answer as something definite ‘out there’ instead of in the Andean

manner of perceiving knowledge to be in a constant state of redefinition and construction.

- The Escuela Normal under Morales

It is much too early to give any definite statements about the impact of the new reforms upon

teacher training. However, the information available suggests that many of the practices Luykx

observed in the 1990s remained unchanged. Lopes Cardozo, who sat in during a lesson at a La Paz

normal school, observed few teaching techniques employed beyond copying material from the

blackboard and questions with singular correct answers (2013:28). Yet the director of the same

college told her that “the new teaching techniques in the normal school will be focused on research

projects, with the aim of developing new knowledges”(ibid:30) revealing the school’s commitment to

change. I agree with Lopes Cardozo that one of the main obstacles to the ‘decolonisation’ of teachers’

colleges are old habits of corruption and inadequately trained instructors assuming responsibility for

the formation of the future teachers’ ‘army’. Nevertheless, I disagree that “insufficient institutional

infrastructure” such as “inadequately equipped libraries” or “insufficient sports/playground

facilities” (ibid:25-26) pose any realistic obstacle to the ‘decolonisation’ of education by preventing

“equitable access of all peoples to knowledge”(ibid:26). After all, vivir bien is about ‘being’ and not

‘getting somewhere’: a specified ‘material need’ to allow for learning to take place will only

�26


encourage competition to achieve it instead of creative use of what is at hand, along with appreciation

and respect for it. The key is to establish a schooling system which is coherent enough to allow for

understanding and communication but at the same time inclusive and respectful of all life and thus

assuring its well-being. Play is one of the channels through which rules can promoting such a societal

ethos and communitarian identity can emerge, leaving behind impersonality, competition and rivalry:

rules which will conflate play with work to make the game by which we put coherence into our lives a

bit more fun than the bureaucratic kind.

Concluding Remarks: Can there be a ‘decolonised’ Andean education?

The role, concept and self-schemas held by the teachers to be at the normal school have

proven to be highly ambiguous. The teacher was regarded as a figure of authority and a social

reformer, but at the same time was proven to be incompetent, corrupt and in compliance with the

“banking sort of education” (Luykx: 1999:197). Manual work was considered unsuitable for the

professional teacher’s job, as work for the inferior archetypal ‘janitor’ and not a communal obligation

and festivit,y as in Warisata. At once, the professors and teachers to be at the normal school were

proud of their ethnic and rural origins and in solidarity with their family and community at home,

largely devoted to agriculture. Addressing such ambivalence during the classroom lesson was “beyond

the pale” (ibid:270), for the script of participation consisted of passive listening, copying and the

recitation of unquestioned pieces of information.

It was only during student performances which, unlike the classroom script, allowed for

creativity and explicit participation that these ambiguities moved from mental to public

representations and the increasing ‘indigenisation’ of Bolivian society was visible at the normal

school. Play, even when considered as a “suspension” from the “ordinary” order (Huizinga, 1949)

draws directly from reality (see e.g Harris, 2000). It is thus perfectly fitted for a public representation

of the ambiguity of everyday life for it can be purely improvisational. Once play turns into a game,

however, it creates rules of its own (Graeber, 2015); rules, that I argue are capable of transforming

schemas and legitimising particular scripts of participations as they slide from the suspended time and

space into the ordinary. In this way, modern indigenous identity previously expressed publicly only

�27


during acts of play became conflated with work and politics as a public representation in

contemporary Bolivian society.

To ‘live well’ implies living in solidarity, in a society in which all kind of work is

theoretically valued equally and put to productive use for the community as a whole. To educate a

society in which everybody is ‘living well’, the discourse must modify not only formal documents and

concept schemas about education and its purposes but also the scripts of interaction between the

teachers and students in question. Learning to become teachers by means of exchanging grades for

certificates is legitimised by a wider societal ethos valuing competition, hierarchy and impersonality -

an ethos antithetical to official discourses promoting vivir bien. Documents - such as laws and

curricula - work like the poems and songs during hora civica: as texts, they can provide information

and change ones conceptions of what education should be like. Yet, they do not automatically assure

changes in legitimate scripts of participation in the school community of practice. Moving towards

full participation must not consist of learning how to most efficiently move up the ladder in the

hierarchy of societal positions, but of learning how to best contribute to the well-being of all (human

or not), how to collaborate with and respect each other. Moving from one structure of participation to

the other will probably take time and the creation of new ambiguous subjectivities, which when

addressed through play will hopefully help to create legitimate rules immersed in an ethos of

‘equality’, ‘cooperation and ‘respect’ for all life. If the new educational reforms manage to foster

scripts of participation resembling those presented in its guidelines and curriculums then we can begin

to speak of the ‘decolonisation’ of Andean education.

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